“People describe Laure as pure, dissolute, dark, luminous. ‘I drank, I bathed in her radiant purity’ Jean Bernier says. Leiris writes about her lyrically in fourbis and frêle bruit as ‘the saint of the chasm.’ Bataille calls her uncompromising, pure, and sovereign. It is tempting to romanticize Laure – in the most sublime and violent sense – as consumptive poet, a fervent revolutionary, Bataille’s great love. But if she is radiant and dirty, she is also insolent. That, it seems, is what saves her.” -Jeanine Herman